Written by admin on 2009-03-12T06:12:20+0000">March 12, 2009 – 6:12 am
If Ну Checkup and Blood Work Are Okay, Can I Be Sure I Have No Cancer?
No. There is a limit to what tests and scans show. A cancer can be too small to be detected with current techniques, or it can be in a place that escapes current methods of detection.
Your doctor will talk with you, examine you, and order appropriate tests to look for cancer. This approach allows doctors, with reasonable risk and cost to you, to pick up most detectable cancers.
What Is a Recurrence?
If you were in complete remission (no evidence of cancer) for any length of time and now there is evidence that the same cancer has come back, you have had a recurrence of your cancer. The returning cancer is called a recurrence.
Each cancer is defined by the organ in which it originated, the organ in which the first cell became cancerous. Your cancer can recur in a different place from where it appeared earlier or in the same place. It has to be the same kind of cancer to be a recurrence. If you had prostate cancer confined to the prostate gland years ago and now you have cancer in the bone that tests show to be prost cancer in the bone, you have had a recurrence of prostate cane Conversely, if you had prostate cancer years ago and now you have colon cancer, you have developed a new, unrelated cane called a “second primary.”
How Do Doctors Know Whether a New Cancer Is a Recurrence о a Past Cancer or an Unrelated Second Primary?
Evaluation of a piece of the new cancer under a microscope and with other sophisticated tests tells doctors what kind of cancer is. In most cases this evaluation can determine whether the ne cancer is a recurrence of a prior cancer or an unrelated second primary. When possible, doctors will compare slides of the ne cancer with slides of the prior cancer under the microscope resolve any question about the new cancer’s being a recurrence. Occasionally, some uncertainty persists whether a cancer is recurrence of a prior cancer or a new, second cancer.
Can a Cancer Ever Come Back as a Different Cancer?
Some types of cancer can transform or change into a different form of the same type of cancer when they recur. For example, low grade lymphoma can go into remission and then recur in a different, high-grade form. Even though the new lymphoma behave: very differently, it is felt to be a recurrence of the original lymphoma and not a second, unrelated primary.
Lymphomas always come back as lymphomas, even if the) come back as a different type of lymphoma. Breast cancer recurs only as breast cancer. Prostate cancer recurs as prostate cancer, and so on.
What Is a Local Recurrence?
A local recurrence is recurrent cancer at or near the place of the original cancer. If you had melanoma treated with surgery and you develop a recurrence near your scar, you are said to have a local recurrence.
If I Have a Recurrence in the Future, Can I Ever Be Cured of My Cancer?
Yes. Many people are cured of their cancer after being treated for recurrent cancer.
Recurrence is not a death sentence; it is an illness.
If your original cancer was treatable, there is a good chance that a recurrence will be treatable.
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